An Amateur Classicist's Review of Political Philosophy, Theology, and Literature, with Occasional Reflections on the Age That Is Passing

Monday, August 28, 2006

Introducing Semi-Fluent.com, a Useful Tool for Language Study!

Among other projects I've been working on, I've developed a modest web site which speeds up reading foreign-language websites considerably.

For people with a basic grasp of grammar, vocabulary is the primary issue. When reading a foreign-language newspaper, even a good browser toolbar does not eliminate the tedium and distraction of vocabulary look-up.

So my little webpage at Semi-fluent.com speeds things up. You can paste in a chunk of text from the source of your choice and each word will be hyperlinked into any available bilingual dictionary. Clicking on each word will pop-up a window containing the word entry and its grammatical analysis. One can skip over known words and word forms and research unknown words with ease--and most importantly, without breaking one's concentration on the text at hand.

I am also developing a plug-in for bilingual blogs and websites to render pages more accessible to non-native readers. This should be a great boon to such webmasters.

The site is still under construction, but I believe it is close enough to completion to receive public input. Comments on layout and functionality are welcome here, though I will soon have contact information set up over at the website.

Should you find the site useful, please spread it around. Websites, like manure, work best that way.